Observer UK Ponders if the Economic Downturn Will "Kill the Foodie Dream"

In the past few months the foodie media have adopted a new tone: a kind of guilty nervousness... there's also an uncomfortable realisation that much of what we have come to regard as a kind of 'foodie establishment' developed in queasy symbiosis with the excessive behaviour we now find embarrassing - and that ultimately being a foodie is just another of those luxuries we're going to have to learn to live without.

The heavily marketed, consumerist side of the food revolution was always an unsustainable bubble - sooner or later, people were going to realise that TV shows with 45 minutes of shouting, arguing and weeping and no recipes didn't have much to do with food.

He remains optimistic, though, hoping that there's been a fundamental, psychological shift in the UK in regards to food, and "when we get out at the other end we're still going to be a changed nation that loves food, that respects cooks, and farmers and needs waiters."